Menu

Bellum omnium contra omnes

Distractions Of The Day

Since my mind is filled with thoughts of the meeting of creditors that I am going to be going to tomorrow to finally expedite my bankruptcy, I am going to, like I have the past few days, write something that is completely irrelevant to anything to do with politics or news or business. I can’t do that kind of thing now, not with the normal level of alacrity I bring to it, so I won’t. I have not been able to concentrate on such, and so would not do any political writing, as any attempt to do so would not do it any justice. Since I want to bring my A -game to my writing at all times, and I don’t have it, I’ll just let it go.

______________________________

I have been driving myself to distraction after getting the important things I have to do in my life done. But thinking about it, that has been the pattern which I have fallen into for much of my life, particularly in stressful situations. I don’t want to think too hard about the bad things that may happen to me, and so after dealing with the most major issues in my life, I look for a place to hide and get away from that crap. This bankruptcy is a clear example of it.

I went through my paperwork, made sure I had everything done today, gone through it with a fine tooth comb, made sure every document that I am supposed to have is where it is supposed to be. Print out a few documents that I need that I can only print out last minute, I.E., this months bank statement, my latest unemployment pay figures, pay-stubs for the last. Double check to make sure all the tax papers that I need are in fact where I need them to be. Make sure the actual bankruptcy documents are with me, and in order.

I then go through the documents a third time. I am a fan of redundancy when I do important work, maybe because I doubt my capacity to do important work right more than anything, I guess. But thoroughness of that nature also helps catch mistakes, and I nearly forgot some important payroll documents that I thought I had but did not. Third time’s the charm.

After all of that freaking out over minutiae, I went running, as is my usual routine, and worked out. I did alter slightly my workout routine today, by working out in front of my wife, and doing it while listening to christmas music. Nothing says love like knuckle push ups while listening to Harry Connick Jr. singing “Let it Snow” or “Greensleeves” by Vince Guaraldi.

________________________________

Viddy of the day: Vince Guaraldi Trio – What Child Is This (Greensleeves).

________________________________

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending. I live and have my day, my son succeeds me and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there in all this to make a tragedy about?

Bertrand Russell

________________________________

I then went and read, fairly extensively, some ancient Greek texts from the 4th century, B.C.E., including some stuff from Pindar, what appears to be letters from him to particular athletes, In particular two from him to a rather talented athlete in the year 474/3 by the name of Melissus of Thebes, who was apparently a hella wrestler and chariot driver.

Reading that then led me to read, or attempt to read some work by Cicero, a work entitled “Essay on running for consul.” Had a hard time with it, seeing how it was still in the original latin. Since I can only puzzle out about two or three of every ten latin words in an unfamiliar text, and that without proper context, I tried to find a good on-line translation site. After about 5 tries from 5 websites, none of which made much sense, and only translated some words, not all, I gave up.

For the moment, I’ll find some way to do it. No worries.

Then after cleaning myself up from workout and run, My wife and I went out for a few minutes. Proud of her I am. She has been, due to a number of things, basically shut in for the last 2 months or so. Got some necessary things at two different stores, but more importantly, we walked around and enjoyed just being outside together.

That was nice, gotta do that more often.

When we got back and put the stuff we got away, we made dinner. Nuthin fancy, pork chops from Angelfood and long grain and wild rice. Twas truly nice, and only took 25 minutes to prep and make.

During part of this time, both before we left, and after we came back, we were listening to the twit network. Listening to tech news, and some funny stuff, along with a good interview with Bob Heil, the guy who created the voice box, that thing that Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton used in the 70’s. He also happens to make the best damn microphones around.

T’was truly excellent.

Then spent some time reading up on early prehistoric humanity, Beaker culture, Neanderthal extinction theories, Swiderian culture, stuff like that. I won’t claim that I got everything there, but it was really interesting, and was true to it’s real purpose.